Technology

With less than a week remaining to sign up for private health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more than half of the uninsured don't know that March 31 is the deadline.

If mobile medical devices had greater interoperability, which means they could better communicate with each other, the nation could avoid more than $30 billion a year in wasteful healthcare spending.

Providers seeking to treat patients using telemedicine will be required to deliver the same standard of care as they would if they were treating them in person, at least according to a proposal from The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB). In fact, these new telemedicine policy guidelines intend to solidify patients' welfare.

The Federation of State Medical Boards will vote next month on a new telemedicine policy that codifies that medical care takes place where a patient, not a provider, is located.

Health information technology is most useful at the point of care so why do so many emergency medical services (EMS) professionals lack access to patient health information where it is likely to prove so effective?

Sustaining and enhancing patient experience in this era of reform will require a combined macro policy-level and micro practice-level approach.

The authors discuss 4 tech-dependent innovations that will be major keys to the sustained success of ACOs.

Currently, more than 600 accountable care organizations (ACOs) have been established throughout the United States. However, a recent study finds that more than half of physician groups remain hesitant to join an ACO.

Evaluation of the 5 As of smoking cessation using patient electronic medical records across 6 distinct healthcare systems, stratified by comorbidity, gender, age, race ethnicity.

Criminals are stealing patient records to commit medical identity theft. And the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has made the situation worse, according to a new report from privacy and information security research firm Ponemon Institute.

Members of the Health IT Policy Committee approved a set of recommendations Tuesday that will bring meaningful use Stage 3 requirements one step closer to federal approval and scale back the initial Stage 3 proposals by 33%.

Edmund J. Pezalla, MD, MPH, national medical director, Aetna Pharmacy Management, says Aetna engages consumers in decision-making in a variety of ways.

Electronic health records are supposed to represent the next great leap in medicine - reducing medical errors and enhancing the physician's diagnostic powers.

Farzad Mostashari, MD, visiting fellow, Brookings Institution, former national coordinator for health information technology (HIT), US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), discusses how data and digitization are driving innovation in healthcare.

Health policy advisors and advocates are shifting their focus to the possibilities of telehealth, which would allow physicians to treat patients virtually. Health experts suggest that this emerging health frontier could be promising, especially for patients who are immobilized or who live in remote locations.

The introduction for Eric J. Topol, MD, who gave the keynote address Saturday at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) in San Diego, California, ended with the usual instruction: Please silence your cell phone.

The federal government's top health official Thursday gave U.S. healthcare innovation a grade of Incomplete.

Session highlights from the Managed Markets Summit in Orlando, FL, February 25-27.

Health information technology (HIT) was the focus of a discussion led by Farzad Mostashari, MD, visiting fellow, Brookings Institution, former national coordinator for HIT, US Department of Health and Human Services. In his Managed Markets Summit 2014 keynote address, Health IT and Reform: The Road to Right Care, Dr Mostashari touched upon the obstacles and shortcomings in our nation's healthcare landscape, and asserted that more prominent usage of HIT would help to alleviate fiscal concerns and affect better outcomes in patient care.

Ed Pezalla, MD, MPH, national medical director for pharmacy policy and strategy, office of the CMO, Aetna, says payers and health plans are preparing for patient-centered care by utilizing digital tools. Everything from virtual people to cost search tools are used to assist employed and general patient populations. Dr Pezalla says many of these tools will also be used in the public and private health insurance exchanges to help people make decisions as they purchase health plans.

Session highlights from the Managed Markets Summit in Orlando, FL, February 25-27.

Farzad Mostashari, MD, visiting fellow, Brookings Institution, former national coordinator for health information technology (HIT), US Department of Health and Human Services, says we need to have payment reform to support the success of HIT.

Federal officials issued the first set of voluntary standards under a new process that will give companies that develop electronic health-record systems more notice about what requirements will be included in the federal rules governing their products.

The likelihood of a positive outcome for a patient across the continuum of care is closely tied to the ability of the patient's health information to follow suit.

Measuring the patient's experience of care will help EMS be perceived as modern healthcare providers.